Georg von Kuechler

Georg von Kuechler (30 May 1881-25 May 1968) was a Field Marshal of Nazi Germany during World War II. Von Kuechler was a talented and popular general, but he was responsible for numerous war crimes during the war with the Soviet Union, including ordering the mass murder of the mentally handicapped and captured Red Army commissars, as well as the fatal mistreatment of captured Soviet soldiers in prisoner-of-war camps.

Biography
Georg von Kuechler was born in Hanau, German Empire in 1881, and he went to a cadet school before serving in the Imperial German Army for seven years. He then studied at a riding school for three years, and he studied at the Military Academy in Berlin from 1910 to 1913; he proceeded to serve in the topographical department of the General Staff. During World War I, he fought at the Somme, Verdun, and Champagne in France, and he won numerous awards and medals for his service. After the war's end, Von Kuechler served in the Freikorps in the Baltic during the wars with the Bolsheviks and Poland.

At the start of World War II in 1939, Von Kuechler fought in the Invasion of Poland, and he was charged with the conquest of the Netherlands after the Polish capital of Warsaw was taken. Von Kuechler used paratroopers to secure large cities and important bridges until the main body of formations arrived, and the conquest of the Netherlands took just five days. He proceeded to capture Antwerp in Belgium, and he captured 40,000 French Army soldiers at Dunkirk in northern France. On the morning of 14 June 1940, it was Von Kuechler's army that triumphantly marched down the Champs-Elysees in Paris. Von Kuechler, who personally supervised his men from a motorcycle sidecar and was popular among his soldiers, was promoted to Colonel-General on 19 July 1940.

In 1941, Von Kuechler fully advocated a war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, supporting the dissolution of the Russian state in Europe and the summary execution of Soviet commissars (the Commissar Order). During Operation Barbarossa, Von Kuechler's German 18th Army fought with Army Group North, forcing its way to Ostrov and Pskov as the Red Army Northwestern Front withdrew towards Leningrad. Kuechler was directly involved in the murder of the mentally disabled in the occupied USSR, allowing for the Sicherheitsdienst to kill 240 mental patients in December 1941. On 17 January 1942, he succeeded Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb as Army Group North's commander, and he maintained the Siege of Leningrad. On 30 June 1942, Kuechler was promoted to Field Marshal on Adolf Hitler's orders. On 31 January 1944, Hitler replaced Von Kuechler with Walther Model, and Kuechler went into retirement. After the war, he was arrested by American occupation authorities, and he was imprisoned in the USSR from 1948 to 1955. He died in 1969.